Military officials considered sending flocks of homing pigeons armed with biological warfare agents against enemy targets, a secret report for British intelligence chiefs said.
The plan, developed by an enthusiastic wing commander immediately after the second world war, is revealed in MI5 files released today. There were also plans to train birds carrying explosives to fly into enemy searchlights.
By the end of the war conventional uses of pigeons had been rendered obsolete by radio and telephone, and the armed forces told Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee they would no longer pay for bird lofts. The re-evaluation is documented in three files labelled "Pigeon Policy", which record inter-departmental disputes over budgets.
To keep the birds on hand just in case, the military decided to maintain a loft in peace time. MI6 offered £150 a year to a civilian who would look after some 100 pigeons.
Wing Commander WEL Rayner, the head of the air ministry's pigeon section, circulated a paper on the "Future Uses of Pigeons". Drawing on studies suggesting birds used electromagnetic fields as guides, he declared: "We can now train pigeons to home to any particular object.
"All we need is a model of the small target and three weeks for special training by experts. There are several possibly useful developments of this. Bacteria might be delivered accurately to a target by this means. [Pigeons] can be used against an enemy target in a distant theatre of war by release 100 or 200 miles away from enemy interference. They can carry a load of 2oz over such a distance. They are not detectable by radar.
"With the latest developments of explosives and bacterial science ... this possibility should be closely investigated ... a thousand pigeons each with a 2oz explosive capsule landed at intervals on a specific target might be a seriously inconvenient surprise."
His contributions were not always appreciated. "Rayner has always been a menace in pigeon affairs," one record noted.
MI14 - the section monitoring Germany - also devised extra uses for the birds, including "possible dropping of pigeon by rocket"; "training pigeons to fly into searchlights armed with an explosive charge"; and the "development of a capsule stimulant to be fed to birds prior to service flight".
When Captain James Caiger, who ran the government loft from his home in Surrey, asked for extra funding in 1950 it was advised the Pigeon Committee be wound up - the loft had barely been used in five years.

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Aren't pigeons relatively violent themselves anyway?

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Helium filled balloons, with razor wire; or lifting an electrified wire mesh?

Now THAT was funny Roger

Also during WWII the U.S. military experimented in using bats with small explosives attached to them for use in starting fires in Japan.  I don't think it got beyond experiments but the thought was that most of the buildings in Japanese cities were wood and the bats would find dark places to hide til the timers ignited the explosives.  I read this in a magazine several years ago.

Jim

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This is true, and so grossly inefficient.  Using people is much more effective and practical.

Didnt the Navy experiment with using dolphins as torpedos?  Or at least to seek out underwater mines?  Seems like I remember reading/seeing that somewhere.